


ineffable husbands ficlets

by athenasdragon



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is wrapped around Aziraphale's little finger, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hypothermia, Insecure Crowley (Good Omens), Kissing, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, New Year's Eve, Post-Canon, Protective Crowley
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-06-03 13:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19464991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenasdragon/pseuds/athenasdragon
Summary: A collection of ineffabls husbands ficlets, mostly from Tumblr requests! See notes for individual descriptions. These ficlets are mostly fluff with some light hurt-comfort. Ace!Aziraphale and ace!Crowley compliant.





	1. New Year's Eve

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Request: hurt/comfort. Story: Crowley takes an unplanned New Year's Eve swim and Aziraphale has to warm him up.
> 
> 2) Request: Aziraphale getting minorly injured and Crowley freaking out. Story: a late-summer thunder storm rolls through London and Aziraphale and Crowley both get startled.
> 
> 3) A drabble about love and forgiveness, both the mundane and the divine
> 
> 4) Request: Crowley catches Aziraphale praising his plants. Story: Crowley discovers that he enjoys Aziraphale's praise a little too much.
> 
> 5) Request: "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere." Story: Crowley stews in his own insecurity until Aziraphale snaps him out of it.

“Are you sure you’re warm enough?” Aziraphale asked for the fifteenth time since they had left his bookshop earlier in the evening.

“I’m fine, angel. Just enjoy the lights.”

Aziraphale wrapped his arm tighter around Crowley’s just to be sure. St. James’s Park was still decorated for Christmas with lights in a hundred colors studding the trees and little red and green ribbons strung along the fences. Aziraphale had been the one to suggest a New Year’s Eve walk, it was true, but now that they were here, he was acutely aware of the cold night air and the drifts of snow that had not yet been fully cleared from the path. He was usually immune to the cold, but Crowley had never quite warmed up from the whole reptile business and the winter weather sometimes bothered him.

“ _Angel_.”

Aziraphale stopped peering at Crowley out of the corner of his eye and made an effort to enjoy the decorations. Their walk led them down past the duck pond, which was empty and dark and partially frozen. The Christmas lights reflected dimly like multicolored stars.

“Hard to believe it’s almost the new year,” Crowley said suddenly. “Things didn’t look promising for a while there.”

“Hmm,” Aziraphale agreed, casting a fond smile in Crowley’s direction. “And here’s to many more.”

“Look out!” a child’s voice called from behind them, and Aziraphale and Crowley turned just in time to see a toboggan hurtling towards them down the path. They leapt apart, Aziraphale back into a mound of shoveled snow and Crowley onto the slope down to the pond. He struggled to find his footing for a few steps as the toboggan whizzed by with the sounds of laughter and scraping snow, but after a moment of stumbling his feet slipped out from under him and he fell backwards, breaking through the thin crust of ice and disappearing for a moment beneath the dark water.

Barely keeping his own footing in his haste, Aziraphale scrambled and slid down to the water. “Crowley? Crowley!”

The demon reemerged, sputtering and without his sunglasses, and Aziraphale grabbed his arms and hauled him out of the water to sit on the snow.

“Are you all right? Let me just—” He pressed his hands to the chest of Crowley’s sopping coat and began to miracle away the wet and cold, but Crowley hissed and jerked away.

“Miracles—remember?” he grunted through gritted teeth, and Aziraphale did indeed remember that some of his miracles were painful for the demon.

He sighed. “Well, you clean yourself up then, and then we’ll go back to my shop for a cup of tea.”

Crowley didn’t respond. He was staring at some point on the other side of the pond, eyes unfocused, his arms draped loosely over his legs.

“Crowley?”

Slowly, the demon slumped down and sideways until Aziraphale caught him to prevent him from laying in the snow.

“Oh dear,” said Aziraphale.

* * *

When Crowley came to, his first impression was of bright, golden light. He had to blink several times before he could open his eyes all the way and survey his surroundings.

He was on the sofa in the back of Aziraphale’s bookshop. There was something pleasantly heavy and warm on top of him—blankets, his brain supplied helpfully—and the lamps had all been dimmed. They only seemed so bright because he was accustomed to seeing the world through dark lenses.

Aziraphale was nowhere to be seen. He blinked sleepily a few more times and twisted around to look for the angel.

“Mrfgh,” said his blankets.

Crowley yelped as the shape on top of him lifted its head to reveal that it was, in fact, Aziraphale. The angel was curled against his chest under a thin quilt, arms wrapped loosely around his neck and face (up until a few seconds ago) pressed into his neck. Now he reddened and tried to slide off of Crowley to perch on the edge of the sofa.

“Wait,” Crowley said, holding him in place, but he couldn’t summon an explanation for why he needed the angel to stay where he was more than he had ever needed anything, so instead he reluctantly dropped his hands to worry the edge of the quilt. “What are you doing?”

“Well, you fell in the water at the park, and I think you shut down a bit from the cold. I tried to miracle you warm but it hurt you, and when I got you back here I realized I didn’t have blankets, and you couldn’t very well drink tea while you were unconscious—” Aziraphale looked deeply apologetic and made to stand up.

“You can—you can stay there,” Crowley blurted, causing Aziraphale to freeze. “I mean, I’m still—that is, I could—”

A slow smile spread over Aziraphale’s face as he lowered himself back down against the demon. “If you would prefer.”

It was a shame the angel had spent so much time warming him back up, Crowley thought, because his heart was about to explode at the catlike sounds of pleasure Aziraphale made as he curled back into place. He gently wrapped him in his arms and tried to tell himself that this was all part of the Arrangement, part of them growing closer since the near-Apocalypse, and not at all a moment of tipping over a precipice into something new and wonderful.

“It’s two,” Aziraphale murmured.

“Pardon?”

“It’s two in the morning.” Crowley could hear his smile even if he could not see it. “Happy new year, Crowley.”

A warmth that had nothing at all to do with Aziraphale’s body heat spread through Crowley’s chest. “Happy new year, angel.”


	2. Thunder

It had only been a few weeks since the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t and Crowley was spending entirely too much time in the back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop. He couldn’t quite allow himself to believe that they were out of danger, but he wasn’t about to tell Aziraphale the reason for his hovering. On this particular day, he was using the excuse of a late-summer squall blowing through London—never mind that he could have walked all the way home without getting wet if he put his mind to it.

“Sure you don’t need a hand?” he called, not quite looking up from the gardening book he was paging through. Crowley did not need gardening advice. He did, however, enjoy making slight alterations to the text so that whatever human picked it up next would be convinced that intimidating their plants into growing was the best strategy.

Aziraphale was in the next room rearranging some of the newer books Adam had added to the shop. “Will you _please_ stop fussing? We can leave for dinner in a few minutes.”

Suddenly there was a flash of light and a fantastic _boom_ from the next room.

Crowley was on his feet in an instant, his flimsy corporeal form filled with adrenaline and a pulse that threatened to shake him to pieces. “Aziraphale!” Horrible visions came to mind as he leapt over the back of the sofa: Gabriel in the middle of the shop wielding some divine weapon that would kill Aziraphale for good, or Beelzebub with a hellfire torch back to do a better job razing the building. “Angel?”

He scrambled through the doorway to see Aziraphale sitting on the floor next to a step stool, already looking more put out about the books he had dropped than about his fall. Outside, lightning flashed again, and thunder rumbled a little farther off.

“Crowley? I got startled by the—are you all right?”

Trying harder than he would like to admit to compose himself, Crowley pushed his sunglasses back up his nose and took one, two deep breaths before walking over to pull Aziraphale to his feet. “Try to be more careful, angel.”


	3. Forgiveness (Drabble)

“Yeah, but if I were _good_ , why was—why aren’t I—” Crowley tapered off, gesturing miserably with his mostly-empty wine bottle.

Aziraphale tightened his arm around the demon’s shoulders. “Why haven’t you been granted forgiveness?”

Crowley just nodded and pushed his sunglasses back up his nose.

“Oh, my dear.” Aziraphale smiled sadly. “I used to receive communications directly from the Almighty, but it’s been centuries. I don’t know whether She much cares anymore. But you’re a good friend to _me_ , and _I_ love you, and _I_ forgive you.”

Crowley sniffled and tried to pass it off as a cough.


	4. Plant Praises

Crowley was still fussing in the kitchen when he heard Aziraphale knock. Macarons were no joke, and he was suspicious that the batch he had just pulled out of the oven were deflating slightly. “It’s open, angel! Come in!”

He heard the creak of his front door and the distinct sound of Aziraphale removing his shoes and turning about for a place to put them. He smiled. This was Aziraphale’s first visit to his flat; the bookshop was their old comfortable meeting place, but he was determined to impress for the first anniversary of the near-Apocalypse. Imagining Aziraphale stepping into the little kitchen—his pleased “oh!” when he saw the desserts arrayed on the counter, Crowley’s staged insistence that he wait at the table because things weren’t quite ready—Crowley bit his lip to quell his grin and busied himself with the raspberry jam he had prepared to fill the cookies.

“Oh _hello_ my darling, don’t you look beautiful! What wonderful work you’re doing.” Aziraphale’s voice was filled with almost awestruck appreciation.

Face going red in an instant, Crowley dropped the jam jar. “P-pardon?” He turned around to try and respond to the unusually effusive greeting, but Aziraphale was not in the doorway. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen. “Aziraphale?”

“In here, my dear!” the angel called—then, more quietly, “And you, my sweet, _you_ are a delight! How lovely.”

Confusion and hot, prickling, irrational jealousy alike filled Crowley as he stomped through his flat looking for Aziraphale. He finally found him in his plant room, bending to cup the fronds of an autumn fern like a gentleman preparing to kiss a lady’s hand. When Crowley cleared his throat, Aziraphale looked up, still smiling radiantly.

“Crowley, you never told me you kept such a beautiful garden! You must take good care of them.”

Crowley shot a glare at the fern, which had the good graces to shrink back a little. The rest of the plants stayed boldly curled towards the complimentary angel. “They know what’s good for them.”

“He does well by, you, doesn’t he?” Aziraphale crooned, addressing the fern once again.

“Angel!” He forced himself to unclench his fists when Aziraphale startled a little at his sharp tone. “The food is ready, wouldn’t you like to sit down in here?”

A knowing expression stealing over his face, Aziraphale looped his arm through Crowley’s and kissed the demon’s cheek as they walked back to the kitchen. “Don’t worry my dear, you look beautiful too.”

This time Crowley flushed deeply enough that he could feel his warm, corporeal blood pulsing through his ears. “ _Angel_ ,” he whined.

“What’s wrong, my love?” Aziraphale smiled more wickedly than an angel ought to. “You don’t like it when I call _you_ a delight, my sweet? My lovely? My beautiful, wonderful darling?”

“Ngk,” said Crowley, feeling a bit as though he was about to melt.

Pulling Crowley to a stop so that he could place his hands on his chest, Aziraphale pushed Crowley gently against the wall and leaned in to kiss the corner of his mouth. “You’re a wonderful gardener, my dear”— _kiss_ —“and the food smells delicious”— _kiss_ —“and I love you so much”— _kiss_ —“and I couldn’t wish for a more perfect companion with whom to enjoy the world after its end.”

Crowley opened and closed his mouth several times, too overwhelmed with the praise to speak and too melty to be annoyed by how much Aziraphale was enjoying his speechlessness. “I made macarons,” he croaked eventually.

Aziraphale laughed and pressed against him for a proper kiss.


	5. Insecurity

Crowley felt Aziraphale’s warm form against him like a brand. The angel never slept, normally, but after nearly two weeks of waiting for the other shoe to drop they had finally decided they were safe and shared a celebratory drink (or two, or a dozen) in the bookshop’s back room. And now here he was, slumped against Crowley, his peaceful expression a temptation engineered to pierce Crowley’s heart and his little barely-audible snores the twist of the knife.

Who was left to say that this was forbidden? Who stood with flaming sword to smite him if he took a taste? They stood hand-in-hand before heaven and hell and wore each other’s faces to face the consequences and now they were free. Why couldn’t the serpent listen to its own needling and just _bite_?

If only Aziraphale could understand the love that consumed him. It was selfish, covetous—he allowed himself the mere imagining of a kiss and was consumed by greed. The wrath that filled him when he remembered Gabriel’s gloating could only be demonic. Even the strongest love was tinged poisonous and foul by his nature. And so the serpent swallowed its own tail, he thought sourly, in order to preserve the fruit.

Careful not to wake Aziraphale, he used his free hand to pull off his sunglasses and set them on the table at his elbow. The lights were dim; the hour was late. If he didn’t think too much, he could almost find the moment peaceful. But thinking too much had always been his strong suit.

Of course Aziraphale loved him. Aziraphale’s understanding of love was like a fish’s understanding of water; it was all he knew. It was the medium through which he moved. He loved the sun for rising in the morning and the trees for growing and the worms which moved beneath his feet. He loved Crowley as a permanent fixture of the Earth which he loved enough to protect it from its end.

Crowley’s face was wet. Curse this body and all its human sensibilities.

That was something Aziraphale didn’t love: humans and their odd unpleasant little quirks. Crying—and not just because he was tasked with spreading joy and goodwill. The sound irritated him.

Crowley contorted his neck to watch the angel’s slack expression and tried to expand the list. Aziraphale didn’t love chocolate chips when he expected raisins. He didn’t love cheap wine, or snow when it started to melt and you put your foot in it and it soaked you up to the calves with mud. He didn’t love most music produced in the last hundred years or so. He didn’t love when Crowley drove fast, or when people left fingerprints in his books, or when the bakery down the street switched ownership just as he had chosen a new favorite pastry.

So on the scale of Aziraphale’s love, Crowley fell somewhere between the Almighty and being forced to switch from pain au chocolat to almond tuiles. He could live with that.

The thought startled a hiccupping laugh out of him. Aziraphale stirred at the sound, tipping his head back to give Crowley a little half-awake smile that slid into a frown when he saw Crowley’s face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, angel.” Crowley forced a smile. “Just—being glad we don’t have to be worried about spending time together anymore.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed, already beginning to nod off once more. He reached up one hand and cupped Crowley’s face, pulling him close so that he could press a kiss to his jaw. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Crowley froze, more tears suddenly welling from his eyes. He swallowed thickly. “Aziraphale?”

“Mm?”

“You’re not?”

Aziraphale snuggled closer, wrapping an arm around Crowley’s waist and hooking one of his ankles over Crowley’s. “I’m not.”

The world did not end when Crowley turned to kiss Aziraphale’s forehead, and he exhaled shakily. “Good.”


End file.
